When you start a konsole and type the commands to start an application you

+

kdelibs provides a [http://api.kde.org/4.0-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kdecore/html/group__kdebug.html family of functions] that output information to <tt>stderr</tt>, meaning that if you run an application from the terminal, it will be displayed in that terminal window. If you run the application from the desktop (using KRunner or the application menu, for example), the output will normally appear in {{path|~/.xsession-errors}} or {{path|~/.X.err}} if you use a login manager like KDM, or on the console you ran <tt>startx</tt> from if you started X that way.

−

will see all sorts of statements are printed in the konsole while the

+

−

application is running. All applications print these messages, to look

+

−

at them you have to know where to look. The application will have to be

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−

compiled with the debugging enabled. So using a precompiled package from a distribution

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−

probably will not give you this information. If you compiled the application

+

−

yourself, make sure the configure option "<tt>--disable-debug</tt>" was not used.

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−

In KDE all debugging text-output can be switched on or off based on so

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To use these functions in your code, you need to include the correct header file <syntaxhighlight lang="cpp-qt">

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called '''areas'''. One application can be one or more area. One part of the kde base libraries can be another area. Enabling/disabling these areas from being printed can be done using the '''kdebugdialog''' application. For simple debugging selecting all

kWarning() << "Something bad happened that users (end-users, or application developers using this library) should be aware of";

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kError() << "Something even worse happened";

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kFatal() << "Something happened so bad we had to terminate the application";

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</syntaxhighlight>

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When you are debugging it is best to simply start a konsole and start the

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The syntax is much like <tt>cout</tt>, and most native C++ types, Qt-provided types and kdelibs-provided types can be passed directly (like with <tt>someVariable</tt> in the example).

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application from there. In a konsole you could simply type:

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−

kicker

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Note that the <tt>kDebug</tt> calls will only do anything if the code was compiled with debugging enabled (and so will generally not work in packages from a distribution). This means <tt>cmake</tt> should be run with the <tt>-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull</tt> argument. The other functions, however, will produce output no matter how the code was compiled.

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and in the konsole kicker could return a message like:

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== Debug Areas ==

−

ERROR: kicker is already running!

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The debugging output can be controlled at runtime using debugging areas. This allows enabling debugging output for only certain libraries or plugins, for example. Debugging areas are numbers, so the <tt>KStatusNotifierItemPrivate::registerToDaemon</tt> method in the kdeui library, for example, has the call <syntaxhighlight lang="cpp-qt">

+

kDebug(299) << "Registering a client interface to the KStatusNotifierWatcher";

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</syntaxhighlight>

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The file <tt>kdebug.areas</tt> in the <tt>kdecore</tt> directory of kdelibs indicates that the number 299 is associated with "kdeui (KNotification)".

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When a lot of output is written to the konsole it might go out of view before

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This information is used by the <tt>kdebugdialog</tt> utility (which you can just run from the commandline or using KRunner) to turn these areas on and off, enabling or disabling those <tt>kDebug</tt> statements. It is also used by <tt>kDebug</tt>, <tt>kWarning</tt>, <tt>kError</tt> and <tt>kFatal</tt> to indicate which component output the line. For example, the line in the above example would produce the line <pre>kwalletmanager(642)/kdeui (KNotification) KStatusNotifierItemPrivate::registerToDaemon: Registering a client interface to the KStatusNotifierWatcher</pre>

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you could read it, therefor it is easy to create a text file which contains

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when executed from within the application kwalletmanager, with PID 642.

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all this information, to do so type the following:

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application 2&gt;&amp;1 | tee debug.log

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For applications, you can generally just omit the area number, and <tt>kDebug</tt> will use the default area. If you are developing a library or a plugin, though, you should get a number assigned (via the kde-core-devel mailing list) for your library or plugin, and use it in your code. Rather than using the number directly in every call to <tt>kDebug</tt> and friends, you can just add<syntaxhighlight lang="cmake">

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add_definition(-DKDE_DEFAULT_DEBUG_AREA=<number>)

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</syntaxhighlight>

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to your <tt>CMakeLists.txt</tt> file.

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where 'application' can be replaced with the application you are debugging.

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== Improving Log Output ==

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Afterwards you could open the file 'debug.log' to look at the messages again.

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If you are NOT starting the application from a konsole the messages will be

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There are a couple of useful environment variables to control the output of <tt>kDebug</tt> and friends. <syntaxhighlight lang="bash">

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logged somewhere else, or they could have been discarded by the program that

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export KDE_COLOR_DEBUG=1

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started your application.

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</syntaxhighlight> will make them produce colored output, and <syntaxhighlight lang="bash">

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export KDE_DEBUG_TIMESTAMP=1

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</syntaxhighlight> will include timestamps in the output. <syntaxhighlight lang="bash">

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export KDE_DEBUG_TIMESTAMP=2

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</syntaxhighlight> can be used to include milliseconds in the timestamps.

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If your application is started by clicking on an icon your best bet is to check

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== Managing Lots of Output ==

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the following log files. Beware; they contain logs for a lot of applications,

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not just the application you are debugging!

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'''Case 1: Graphical login (i.e. kdm, gdm, xdm, etc.'''

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If you have lots of debugging statements, they may appear too fast and leave the terminal window before you can read them. There are three main ways to deal with this:

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# Use <tt>kdebugdialog</tt> to disable some logging areas to limit the amount of output generated

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# Increase the amount of scrollback in the terminal so that output is not lost; in Konsole, you can go to <tt>Settings > Edit Current Profile...</tt> and click on the <tt>Scrollback</tt> tab to change this. Konsole also has a useful search feature: just press <tt>Ctrl+Shift+F</tt> or click <tt>Find...</tt> on the <tt>Edit</tt> menu.

+

# Save the output to a file; <tt>tee</tt> is useful for this. For example, you can run <pre>application 2&gt;&amp;1 | tee debug.log</pre> to save the output to the file <tt>debug.log</tt> while still viewing it in the terminal. This can also be used to capture output from <tt>startx</tt>.

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The debug messages get redirected into the file {{path|~/.xsession-errors}} or

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= Qt 5 / KDE Frameworks 5 =

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{{path|~/.X.err}} in your home directory (that is with a leading dot '.' also

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watch the Capital).

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'''Case 2: You are using startx:'''

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<tt>kDebug()</tt> and friends have been deprecated in KDE Frameworks 5, and you should use Qt's built-in debugging instead. We recommend that you use [http://doc-snapshot.qt-project.org/qt5-stable/qloggingcategory.html QLoggingCategory], particularly for libraries and plugins. Note that this is only available in Qt 5.2 and later.

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Use the following command to restart your session:

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In particular, for a library or plugin called "Foo", you should have a common header that contains the following declaration <syntaxhighlight lang="cpp-qt">

so that all the debug messages of applications started at KDE's startup (and

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You should treat the string as something like reverse DNS; it cannot contain spaces, and dots indicate a heirarchy. For example, a Plasma dataengine called "Foo" might use the category <tt>"plasma.engine.foo"</tt>.

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any application launched from the panel etc.) go to the file "startx.log"

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== Links ==

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Logging lines then look like <syntaxhighlight lang="cpp-qt">

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qCDebug(LOG_FOO) << "Log something:" << someVariable;

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qCWarning(LOG_FOO) << "Something bad happened that users (end-users, or application developers using this library) should be aware of";

+

qCCritical(LOG_FOO) << "Something happened so bad we had to terminate the application";

+

</syntaxhighlight>

−

The debug messages are usually printed in C++ with the kDebug or kWarning statement. Example:

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The syntax is much like <tt>cout</tt>, and most native C++ types, Qt-provided types and kdelibs-provided types can be passed directly (like with <tt>someVariable</tt> in the example).

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kDebug(1210) << "arbitrary message";

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With Qt 5.2, the <tt>qCDebug</tt> line will not produce any output; this is because logging categories are disabled by default. You need to include the line <syntaxhighlight lang="cpp-qt">

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kWarning(1210) << "this rather should not happen";

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QLoggingCategory::setFilterRules(QStringLiteral("foo.debug = true"));

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</syntaxhighlight>

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somewhere in the application code, generally in the <tt>main()</tt> function. Of course, you would typically disable this call in release versions. Qt 5.3 will hopefully include a way to change this configuration externally, without recompiling.

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The number 1210 (so called ''debug area'') in this case represents kicker. You can omit the number.

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If you run your application from within a terminal application, like [http://www.kde.org/applications/system/konsole/ Konsole], you will see the logging output in that terminal window. Otherwise, it will usually appear in {{path|~/.xsession-errors}} or {{path|~/.X.err}} if you use a login manager like KDM, or on the console you ran <tt>startx</tt> from if you started X that way.

Note that you can use add_definition(-DKDE_DEFAULT_DEBUG_AREA=<number> ) in CmakeLists.txt to specify default debug area.

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''Initial Author:'' [mailto:zander@kde.org Thomas Zander]

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Qt provides a way of controlling the output of the logging methods via an environment variable. You can tell it to include the application name and PID, as well as the debugging category, and color-code the text. For example, running the following lines in your shell will produce something that looks quite like <tt>kDebug</tt>'s colored output: <syntaxhighlight lang="bash">

If you have lots of debugging statements, they may appear too fast and leave the terminal window before you can read them. There are three main ways to deal with this:

+

# [http://doc-snapshot.qt-project.org/qt5-stable/qloggingcategory.html#setFilterRules Disable some logging categories] to limit the amount of output generated

+

# Increase the amount of scrollback in the terminal so that output is not lost; in Konsole, you can go to <tt>Settings > Edit Current Profile...</tt> and click on the <tt>Scrollback</tt> tab to change this. Konsole also has a useful search feature: just press <tt>Ctrl+Shift+F</tt> or click <tt>Find...</tt> on the <tt>Edit</tt> menu.

+

# Save the output to a file; <tt>tee</tt> is useful for this. For example, you can run <syntaxhighlight lang="bash">application 2<&1 | tee debug.log</syntaxhighlight> to save the output to the file <tt>debug.log</tt> while still viewing it in the terminal.

Revision as of 18:33, 25 November 2013

Contents

Qt 4 / kdelibs 4

kdelibs provides a family of functions that output information to stderr, meaning that if you run an application from the terminal, it will be displayed in that terminal window. If you run the application from the desktop (using KRunner or the application menu, for example), the output will normally appear in ~/.xsession-errors or ~/.X.err if you use a login manager like KDM, or on the console you ran startx from if you started X that way.

To use these functions in your code, you need to include the correct header file

#include <KDebug>

and then you can use the functions

kDebug()<<"Something happened that only developers care about"<< someVariable;
kWarning()<<"Something bad happened that users (end-users, or application developers using this library) should be aware of";
kError()<<"Something even worse happened";
kFatal()<<"Something happened so bad we had to terminate the application";

The syntax is much like cout, and most native C++ types, Qt-provided types and kdelibs-provided types can be passed directly (like with someVariable in the example).

Note that the kDebug calls will only do anything if the code was compiled with debugging enabled (and so will generally not work in packages from a distribution). This means cmake should be run with the -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull argument. The other functions, however, will produce output no matter how the code was compiled.

Debug Areas

The debugging output can be controlled at runtime using debugging areas. This allows enabling debugging output for only certain libraries or plugins, for example. Debugging areas are numbers, so the KStatusNotifierItemPrivate::registerToDaemon method in the kdeui library, for example, has the call

kDebug(299)<<"Registering a client interface to the KStatusNotifierWatcher";

The file kdebug.areas in the kdecore directory of kdelibs indicates that the number 299 is associated with "kdeui (KNotification)".

This information is used by the kdebugdialog utility (which you can just run from the commandline or using KRunner) to turn these areas on and off, enabling or disabling those kDebug statements. It is also used by kDebug, kWarning, kError and kFatal to indicate which component output the line. For example, the line in the above example would produce the line

kwalletmanager(642)/kdeui (KNotification) KStatusNotifierItemPrivate::registerToDaemon: Registering a client interface to the KStatusNotifierWatcher

when executed from within the application kwalletmanager, with PID 642.

For applications, you can generally just omit the area number, and kDebug will use the default area. If you are developing a library or a plugin, though, you should get a number assigned (via the kde-core-devel mailing list) for your library or plugin, and use it in your code. Rather than using the number directly in every call to kDebug and friends, you can just add

add_definition(-DKDE_DEFAULT_DEBUG_AREA=<number>)

to your CMakeLists.txt file.

Improving Log Output

There are a couple of useful environment variables to control the output of kDebug and friends.

exportKDE_COLOR_DEBUG=1

will make them produce colored output, and

exportKDE_DEBUG_TIMESTAMP=1

will include timestamps in the output.

exportKDE_DEBUG_TIMESTAMP=2

can be used to include milliseconds in the timestamps.

Managing Lots of Output

If you have lots of debugging statements, they may appear too fast and leave the terminal window before you can read them. There are three main ways to deal with this:

Use kdebugdialog to disable some logging areas to limit the amount of output generated

Increase the amount of scrollback in the terminal so that output is not lost; in Konsole, you can go to Settings > Edit Current Profile... and click on the Scrollback tab to change this. Konsole also has a useful search feature: just press Ctrl+Shift+F or click Find... on the Edit menu.

Save the output to a file; tee is useful for this. For example, you can run

application 2>&1 | tee debug.log

to save the output to the file debug.log while still viewing it in the terminal. This can also be used to capture output from startx.

Qt 5 / KDE Frameworks 5

kDebug() and friends have been deprecated in KDE Frameworks 5, and you should use Qt's built-in debugging instead. We recommend that you use QLoggingCategory, particularly for libraries and plugins. Note that this is only available in Qt 5.2 and later.

In particular, for a library or plugin called "Foo", you should have a common header that contains the following declaration

#include <QLoggingCategory>
Q_DECLARE_LOGGING_CATEGORY(LOG_FOO)

and exactly one source file containing

Q_LOGGING_CATEGORY(LOG_FOO,"foo")

You should treat the string as something like reverse DNS; it cannot contain spaces, and dots indicate a heirarchy. For example, a Plasma dataengine called "Foo" might use the category "plasma.engine.foo".

Logging lines then look like

qCDebug(LOG_FOO)<<"Log something:"<< someVariable;
qCWarning(LOG_FOO)<<"Something bad happened that users (end-users, or application developers using this library) should be aware of";
qCCritical(LOG_FOO)<<"Something happened so bad we had to terminate the application";

The syntax is much like cout, and most native C++ types, Qt-provided types and kdelibs-provided types can be passed directly (like with someVariable in the example).

With Qt 5.2, the qCDebug line will not produce any output; this is because logging categories are disabled by default. You need to include the line

QLoggingCategory::setFilterRules(QStringLiteral("foo.debug = true"));

somewhere in the application code, generally in the main() function. Of course, you would typically disable this call in release versions. Qt 5.3 will hopefully include a way to change this configuration externally, without recompiling.

If you run your application from within a terminal application, like Konsole, you will see the logging output in that terminal window. Otherwise, it will usually appear in ~/.xsession-errors or ~/.X.err if you use a login manager like KDM, or on the console you ran startx from if you started X that way.

Improving Logging Output

Qt provides a way of controlling the output of the logging methods via an environment variable. You can tell it to include the application name and PID, as well as the debugging category, and color-code the text. For example, running the following lines in your shell will produce something that looks quite like kDebug's colored output:

Increase the amount of scrollback in the terminal so that output is not lost; in Konsole, you can go to Settings > Edit Current Profile... and click on the Scrollback tab to change this. Konsole also has a useful search feature: just press Ctrl+Shift+F or click Find... on the Edit menu.

Save the output to a file; tee is useful for this. For example, you can run

application 2<&1|tee debug.log

to save the output to the file debug.log while still viewing it in the terminal.